Slightly morbid

Salon has a blog called Brand Graveyard for the brands that are dying in the economic turmoil. It's got eulogies for Saab, Mervyns and Virgin Megastore.

Spring = Artistic Urges?

Garrison Keillor has hit it on the nose once again:

In spring, a person's thoughts naturally turn toward what you would rather be doing than earning a living, and in America this usually means Being An Artist. This is the true American dream. Winning the lottery is a faint hope, becoming a sports hero is a daydream, but publishing poetry is the ambition of one-third of the American people and another third are thinking about writing a memoir.

And you thought you were the only one! Ha! You are part of a vast tide. One reason the economy is so sour is that nobody wants to tote barges or lift bales, they want to be edgy and multilayered and express their anguish in some colorful and inexplicable way. Your dental hygienist is a poet ("Into the ravenous maw flecked with food and decked with plaque, I descend, pick in hand"), and this does not make for better dental care. People who feel they have a Higher Calling may feel justified in slacking off on the Lower Calling even though it is the one that pays the light bill. Your mailman comes sweeping up the walk on the tips of his toes, arms extended, twirls, and hands you an invitation to his dance recital. Also a handful of your neighbor's mail. You attend the recital and it is not bad. Men and women barefoot in leotards tossing brown parcels back and forth and running from dogs and afterward you must go backstage and tell them how good it was.

GM Chief ousted by Obama

Is this micro-management?

The cold and grey in snowy Detroit is an accurate reflection of the mood here as people wake up to the idea that their industrial landscape has changed again. President Obama has swept aside one of the pillars of the car industry here.

Mr Wagoner was a GM veteran, so on local talk shows his resignation was met with some incredulity that he could be forced out by Washington, with one caller insisting he was the victim of and not the creator of the global recession.

Both in urban Detroit and surrounding rural Michigan there is a deep set conservatism that instinctively dislikes this level of government intervention.

But there is mounting nervousness too. Mr Wagoner had already pledged to cut a fifth of GM's global workforce and close 14 factories. By forcing him to go, President Obama is clearly saying is, that's not enough.

Pictures from our trip to California

Sobbing for Saab

As a long-time owner and fan of Saabs, it saddens me to think that they're on the brink. Now the Swedish government has said no to helping.

This helps me to understand my reaction to people wanting to save the Detroit auto makers. Perhaps I was harsh in my opinion on saving Detroit because I have no affection for US made cars and because it would be MY tax dollars. But truth be told, I really wouldn't mind if Swedish tax dollars would go toward saving my nice little Saabs.

Buy Local? Buy Black?

I've seen a few articles recently about towns where people are buying "local bucks" which they then can only use locally, as a way to bolster local business in hard times. Overall, "buy local" is becoming a common mantra.

Here's a new one that I just came across: People patronizing only African-American owned businesses.

I suppose it all comes down to putting your money where your mouth is and using your purchasing power for what is important to you, even in a recession.

Immigration fun

There's an interactive map in the NY Times today that is really cool and interesting. It show immigration patterns in the US from 1880 to 2000.
For example, did you realize Maine has had a steady influx of Canadians for more than 100 years? The south only became a major destination for immigrants in the 1960s, attracting people from Latin America. The major immigration pattern before then was Eastern and Western Europeans arriving on the East Coast across the Upper Midwest.

Alexander McCall Smith's On-line Novel

For you fellow fans out there, did you know he has an on-line 100 episode novel? It's called Corduroy Mansions.

I haven't read or listened to it yet, but I'm looking forward to it! It's read by the actor who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers!

Hat tip: Dad

Copenhagen drug wars

Copenhagen is the place with free bicycle programs where you leave your car at the edge of the city and borrow a bike for the day. Now they're having open drug warfare!

And you'll note how things have changed - the 2008 Quality of Living ranking that they quote has Iceland as the most peaceful country. I wonder how it will stack up this year after riots and economic upheaval.

A turf war between drug gangs is turning one of Europe’s safest cities into a shooting gallery.

Denmark’s worst-ever bout of violence between criminals intensified last week with three shootings that left two dead in Copenhagen, the capital. That prompted the government on March 4 to propose some of the most sweeping laws in the country’s legal history by lengthening jail terms and giving police more surveillance powers, including wiretaps.

Copenhagen places third among European capitals in Mercer Investment Consulting’s 2008 Quality of Living rankings, which assesses crime rates and personal safety. Vienna and Bern, the Swiss capital, were ahead. Denmark is the world’s second-most peaceful country behind Iceland, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, which ranks 140 countries.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my 36 years serving the Copenhagen police force,” said Henrik Svindt, who heads an anti-gang unit formed last week. “The worst thing is that some of the people killed or injured are innocent bystanders.”

Spraying Bullets

In 2008, there were 60 shootings in Copenhagen, three times the number in the previous year. The latest round of conflict pits about 100 bikers against an estimated 300 gang members in the city, police say.

On March 2, two masked gangsters sprayed a Copenhagen bar frequented by Hells Angels members with at least 10 bullets. The shooters, who haven’t been caught, killed one and wounded three people who weren’t linked to bikers.

“This is not the city I know,” said Bjarke Lungholt, 35, a medical intern who lives with his young family in the Noerrebro district, where the majority of the attacks have taken place. “It’s bizarre that it happens so openly and frequently.” [Bloomberg.com]

Engagement with Iran

Wow, Hilary Clinton has announced that Iran will be invited to an international conference on the future of Afghanistan and Iran has indicated they will accept. This is such an enormous move forward and break with the junior high school "I'm not going to talk to you" mentality of the Bush administration.

I suppose that any conversations on how we can work together or come to agreement on Iraq will come as a second step.

Foooooood!

Here's a list of what the Times OnLine says are the fifty best food blogs....

How can Mugabe get any more shockingly awful?

ZIMBABWE’S President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace have secretly bought a £4m bolt-hole in the Far East while his country struggles with hyper-inflation, mass unemployment and a cholera epidemic.

The Mugabes’ house, in an exclusive residential complex in Hong Kong, was purchased on their behalf by a middleman through a shadowy company whose registered office is in a run-down tenement block. When a reporter and a photographer called at the house last week, they were attacked by the Zimbabwean occupants. The assailants were questioned by the police.

The property came to light during a Sunday Times investigation into the Mugabes’ financial interests in Asia, where a web of associates has helped them to spend lavishly on luxuries and stash away millions in bank accounts. In Zimbabwe, meanwhile, inflation has reached 231m%, unemployment stands at 94% and 3,467 people have died in recent months from cholera.

According to sources in Zimbabwe and Asia, Grace Mugabe has splashed out £55,500 on marble statues in Vietnam and £8,700 on a handbag in Singapore. She and her husband have enjoyed some of the region’s finest hotels.

In Hong Kong, where she has discussed a venture to have Zimbabwean diamonds cut and polished in China, her aides paid one hotel bill with a bag of cash containing £10,500. [Times]

Endangered Languages

The world has lost Manx in the Isle of Man, Ubykh in Turkey and last year Alaska's last native speaker of Eyak, Marie Smith Jones, died, taking the aboriginal language with her.

Of the 6,900 languages spoken in the world, some 2,500 are endangered, the UN's cultural agency UNESCO said Thursday as it released its latest atlas of world languages...

There are 199 languages in the world spoken by fewer than a dozen people, including Karaim which has six speakers in Ukraine and Wichita, spoken by 10 people in the US state of Oklahoma...

India tops the list of countries with the greatest number of endangered languages, 196 in all, followed by the United States which stands to lose 192 and Indonesia, where 147 are in peril. (Yahoo.com)

So, what is the impact of a language being lost? Clearly, language is an important part of culture and so with the loss of a language, the world loses part of the global cultural heritage.

On the other hand, how do you keep these languages alive? People must not be passing them to the next generation because they are not useful. I remember reading years ago that these languages are largely lost to languages linked to political or economic power, like English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic...

Fascinating Chicago Buses

According to the Chicago Tribune:

The CTA Bus Tracker Web site has received 15,395 visits since last year from people in Norway or whose computers or personal wireless devices were registered in that country.

That's more Web "hits" than any other country outside the United States, according to the information-technology gurus at the CTA.

But it doesn't appear that most of those 15,000-plus Norwegian folks happened along to the Bus Tracker site ( www.ctabustracker.com) by accident because 75 percent of them clicked through to visit other pages on the CTA Web site and spent more than 18 minutes there before moving on, officials said.

"Many people just like to watch buses on their computer, even if they are not planning a trip," CTA spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney said.

It is kinda cool to watch the buses go 'round. Give it a try.
Hat tip: Margaret.

China vs. India

Here's an interesting excerpt a review in Foreign Policy of the book, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, written by the first Chinese-speaking Indian journalist in Beijing:

Whether it’s the breathless pace of China’s economy versus India’s slower, more measured growth, or China’s communist political system rated against India’s complicated democracy, the two countries are endlessly dissected in relation to one another. Yet amid all the hand-wringing over which country is “beating” the other in their race to industrialize, one simple question sums up very pointedly the debate over which one is making life better for its citizens. It’s a question few dare to ask in polite circles: If you were born today, would you rather be Chinese or Indian?

Delhi-born Pallavi Aiyar, the first Chinese-speaking Indian journalist based in Beijing and author of an engaging new book about the two countries, takes on the charged question. The best option, she contends, is to be a high-caste Indian man. His political freedom would certainly outweigh the economic opportunities of any Chinese citizen, she argues. But if that weren’t possible, she’d choose to be a wealthy Chinese woman, because she wouldn’t be as constrained as her Indian counterparts by low literacy rates and limits on female participation in the public sphere. If she had to be poor, she’d go with China. An Indian latrine cleaner may get to vote, she says, but a Chinese one is far less likely to be viewed as completely subhuman.

PJ O'Rourke on Adam Smith

In today's FT...

How then would Adam Smith fix the present mess? Sorry, but it is fixed already. The answer to a decline in the value of speculative assets is to pay less for them. Job done.

We could pump the banks full of our national treasure. But Smith said: “To attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to attempt to increase the good cheer of private families, by obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils.” [440]

We could send in the experts to manage our bail-out. But Smith said: “I have never known much good done by those who affect to trade for the public good.” [456]

And we could nationalise our economies. But Smith said: “The state cannot be very great of which the sovereign has leisure to carry on the trade of a wine merchant or apothecary”. [818] Or chairman of General Motors.

Hyde Park - at the center of the Universe?

Well, there are some who would say that the University of Chicago has always been the center of the Universe, but it's certainly stepped up since the election of our home-town boy.

This afternoon, an an incredibly gorgeous unseasonably warm day in Chicago, I opened the door to the fire escape and say four Marine Corps helicopters flying over.

Is our Prez in town visiting home?

Almost missed it!!

The Westminster Dog Show is already 1/2 over already and I've missed the terrier group. :-( Here's a link to the Westie judging.
But you can still watch the final judging and Best in Show tonight!

Here are some great pics.

This is, of course, also a great time to watch the 2000 movie Best in Show - a classic for all times.

I wonder if George realizes that some day he'll be the proud papa of a Westie and an Afghan Hound.

More on Enlightenment

I'm so glad to see that the subject of Enlightenment elicited so many responses!

To follow on in a bit less light-hearted vein, here's a great quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

The time is always right to do what is right.

How Enlightened Are You?

A Test:

If you can live without caffeine or nicotine;
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains;
If you can resist complaining;
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you any time;
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment;
If you can ignore friends' limited educations and never correct them;
If you can treat the rich and poor alike;
If you can face the world without lies or deceit;
If you can conquer tension without medical help;
If you can relax without liquor;
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs;
If you can have no prejudice against creed, color, religion, gender, sexual preference, or politics;

Then you have almost reached the same level of spiritual development as your dog.

Davos Psychology

Here's an interesting piece on the Foreign Policy site on the behind-the-scenes mood at Davos:

When participants were asked whether they think they have done something in their career which "might have contributed, even in a minor way, to the financial crisis," 63.5 percent opted for a clear "no"; 31.5 percent went for a "yes," often adding in the same breath that nobody in the industry can honestly claim otherwise; and 5 percent said "maybe."

The "yes" people were then asked to explain what triggered their wrong decisions. They had three options: "too much optimism" (68.7 percent), "I felt I had to keep dancing while the music was playing" (31.3 percent), or "greed" (0 percent)....

For all the talk of the more "somber" mood at this year's event, there were about 100 more private jet movements at the Zurich airport last week than during last year's event. I'm not sure if the irony was lost on the organizers who handed out pedometers to forum participants, to encourage them to walk and reduce their carbon footprint.

Super Bowl Warm-up

Here's a great round up of the best of commercials past...

Consumption = Life?

I'm passing along a reference from my friend's very good blog, Thoughts in the Days of an Economist, from Andrew Sullivan on the economy:

Why is a lower standard of living unimaginable for us for a while? Why is it essential that income keeps rising? Why can't we do more with less?...

This is why our problem is not just economic; it's spiritual. We have mistaken consuming for living.

Healthy body, healthy mind

Before he agreed to cook for the Obama family in the White House, Chicago chef Sam Kass was already talking about changing the way American children eat.

During weekly Tuesday gatherings at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago, Mr. Kass hosted “Rethinking Soup,” which he described as “a communal event where we will eat delicious, healthy soup and have fresh, organic conversation about many of the urgent social, cultural, economic and environmental food issues that we should be addressing.”

In May, over a meal of locally-produced beef and barley soup, Mr. Kass lamented the sorry state of the National School Lunch Program, which provides low-cost or free lunches to schoolchildren. He noted that what gets served up to kids is influenced by government agricultural subsidies. As a result, he says, meals served to students are low in vegetables and disproportionately high in fat, additives, preservatives and high-fructose corn syrup. (He also links the high consumption of sugary foods and food additives to learning difficulties and attention deficit disorder, although the medical community remains divided on that issue.) [NYT]

And the serious stuff....

:Michelle's fashion, the take by the NY Times. I loved the yellow dress for the inauguration. Wasn't quite as excited about the white dress for the balls.